Simulation of argon response and light detection in the DarkSide-50 dual phase TPC

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Published 23 October 2017 © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab
, , Citation P. Agnes et al 2017 JINST 12 P10015 DOI 10.1088/1748-0221/12/10/P10015

1748-0221/12/10/P10015

Abstract

A Geant4-based Monte Carlo package named G4DS has been developed to simulate the response of DarkSide-50, an experiment operating since 2013 at LNGS, designed to detect WIMP interactions in liquid argon. In the process of WIMP searches, DarkSide-50 has achieved two fundamental milestones: the rejection of electron recoil background with a power of ∼107, using the pulse shape discrimination technique, and the measurement of the residual 39Ar contamination in underground argon, ∼3 orders of magnitude lower with respect to atmospheric argon. These results rely on the accurate simulation of the detector response to the liquid argon scintillation, its ionization, and electron-ion recombination processes. This work provides a complete overview of the DarkSide Monte Carlo and of its performance, with a particular focus on PARIS, the custom-made liquid argon response model.

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10.1088/1748-0221/12/10/P10015